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Abandoned mines › Tennessee
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Jefferson County, Tennessee

Jefferson County, Tennessee has 40 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1935–1980, including 6 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 6 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Jefferson County, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem in the county, and every MSHA-registered mine here with status Abandoned. Named features are listed below; unnamed ones are counted by type. Locations are deliberately not shown: this page says what abandoned workings are in the county, not where to find them. They are dangerous and should not be entered.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
40
Mine openings
6
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
6 features carry a name0 prospect pits6 quadrangle maps, published 1935–1980 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    6 15.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    22 55.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    1 2.5%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    11 27.5%
Named features on the maps6 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Coy Mine Mine Shaft
Coy Mine Tailings - Undifferentiated area
Grasselli Mine Mine Shaft
North Friends Station Mine Adit
Young Mine Mine Shaft
Young Mine Open Pit Mine area

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned16 on register
  1. Beaver Creek Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Tennessee Zinc Div/Inspiration Development Co · MSHA ID 4001751
    Abandoned
  2. Beaver Creek Stone Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Beaver Creek Stone Company · MSHA ID 4002698
    Abandoned
  3. Coy Stone Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · American Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 4002305
    Abandoned
  4. Grasselli Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Southeast Agg Operations, LLC · MSHA ID 4003131
    Abandoned
  5. Jefferson City Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Tennessee Zinc Div/Inspiration Development Co · MSHA ID 4000869
    Abandoned
  6. Jefferson City Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Tennessee Zinc Div/Inspiration Development Co · MSHA ID 4000137
    Abandoned
  7. Jefferson City Zinc Open Cut Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jefferson City Zinc · MSHA ID 4001165
    Abandoned
  8. Lost Creek Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · New Jersey Zinc Company · MSHA ID 4001425
    Abandoned
  9. Maintenance and Supply
    Facility metal/non-metal · Nyrstar Tennessee Mines, Strawberry Plains LLC · MSHA ID 4000605
    Abandoned
  10. NEW MARKET AGGREGATES
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 4003052
    Abandoned
  11. New Market Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Asarco Inc · MSHA ID 4000868
    Abandoned
  12. Rocktown Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rocktown Road Quarry · MSHA ID 4003207
    Abandoned
  13. Rocktown Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakeway Rock Products Inc · MSHA ID 4001622
    Abandoned
  14. Walker's Lot
    Surface metal/non-metal · Walker's Rock · MSHA ID 4003325
    Abandoned
  15. Young Lime Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Asarco Inc · MSHA ID 4002108
    Abandoned
  16. Young Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mossy Creek Mining · MSHA ID 4003307
    Abandoned

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 13
Tailings - Undifferentiated 7
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Mine Shaft 5
Tailings - Pond 4
Disturbed Surface 1
Adit 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Quarry 1
Other counties in TennesseeAll counties →
How to read these numbers

A USGS feature is a symbol on a historical topographic map, there when the map was surveyed; it may since have been sealed, reclaimed, built over or reopened as a working mine, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s. The three overlap and are never added together. The county is assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method is on the national page.

Sources
  1. USGS, Consolidated Prospect- and Mine-Related Features from 7.5- and 15-Minute Topographic Quadrangle Maps of the United States (USMIN)
    597,612 point and area features digitized from about 106,350 historical topographic maps published 1886–2006; public domain (CC0). A feature is a map symbol, not a field-verified site, and the map does not say whether it was still worked.
  2. USGS Fact Sheet 2025–3003, The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States
    States that as of 2025 there is no comprehensive national inventory of abandoned mine features, and that the detailed national database now being built will not be published.
  3. OSMRE, Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (e-AMLIS), public Problems layer
    One row per abandoned mine land problem in a problem area, with its type, funding program and reclamation status; mostly coal mined before the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Coordinates are the problem area's.
  4. MSHA, Mines dataset (Mine Data Retrieval System)
    Every mine registered with MSHA since the 1970s; a mine reads Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed when its operator reported that status. Refreshed weekly.
  5. US Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic county boundaries (1:500,000)
    Each feature's county is assigned by its coordinates against these boundaries, not copied from the source file.
  6. GAO-20-238, Abandoned Hardrock Mines (March 2020)
    Federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land and estimated more than 390,000 more not yet captured in their databases.
  7. Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation (AHMR) Program, US Department of the Interior
    The program the USGS inventory is compiled for. Its appropriations and the 674,000 field-confirmed feature count on this page were provided by the program manager, Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, and are cited with permission (2026-09-08).
  8. IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report
    Page 48 carries the two figures this page leans on: USGS estimates 633,181 of the 725,690 mine features it recorded from historic topographic maps, 87 percent, are hardrock; and state and federal agencies have submitted more than 724,000 AML features to the national database being built, already more than the historic maps hold. Year-by-year AHMR funding is on page 35.